In our military self-defence MSD or military close quarters combat MCQC combating and countering of armed and unarmed threats, being aware of environment hazards and dangers and making yourself as safe as humanly possible by employing preventative tactics is as important as hard targeting yourself against your aggressor.
While you may well be able to execute skills to neutralise a formidable foe and protect yourself under assault, the same cannot be said of protecting yourself against hard surfaces and protrusions impact, going through plate-glass or blindly ending up in the path of oncoming vehicles.
It is not offensive or counteroffensive actions that are required when it comes to environmental hazards or dangers, it is sound avoidance tactics to maximise your safety.
You should never run blindly into actions on and you must always fast map assess environmental and situational hazards and dangers and avoid them.
You need to not only assess the threat but also assess the environment and make decisions based on best means of threat neutralisation and risk reduction maximising your personal safety.
To effectively achieve this requires controlling your aggression and emotions and reducing the effects of threat and fear related human reactions.
Just like tactical decisions in relation to ensuring your rear and side flanks are safe and that you have available escape and evasion options you need to be aware of hazards or obstacles and environmental dangers.
Obviously identifying environmental hazards can be advantageous if you take advantage of them in relation to introducing your enemy to them.
We do not have eyes in the back of our heads and with our spinal cord especially our cervical spine/nape of the neck being so vulnerable, we need to make sure we position ourselves away from high risk surfaces and protrusions.
We need to be aware of uneven surfaces such as gutters/curb and channelling, vehicle entrances, lampposts, glass frontages, steps and door ways.
Cracks in pavements and pot holes can cause ankle and knee injuries that can reduce your combative capabilities and eliminate your ability to escape and evade.
Vehicles both stationary and moving create risks through impact/contact.
Leg contact with a vehicle tow ball can produce painful injury that can hinder your ability to defend yourself.
Tripping over obstacles such as chairs can not only produce contact injury but also can end in decentralisation and you don’t want to be on the ground under urban assault threats.
Rapid rear flank movements without assessment, especially in relation to glass frontages can produce serious injury.
Simply by using peripheral vision and tactical back blocking footwork diagonally to the rear where you have identified safe ground rather than directly backwards to your six where you have no vision increases safety by considerable.
Tactically avoiding hazards and obstacles putting you in a position where your rear and side flanks are as safe as possible is the priority before any actions on are initiated.
Using hazards or obstacles as a layer of protection that prevent or slow down your aggressor’s incoming actions is tactically smart.
Having sound hard cover guard capabilities including if decentralised to provide priority cover/protective layers for life-support systems and delicate human senses can be the difference between winning and being defeated and badly injured.
Just like in dirty or deadly military armed and unarmed combat minimal force can produce devastating outcomes so can impact contact with hard surfaces or sharp edges related to wide ranging urban hazards.
As with anti-encounter skills to ensure you do not have to face violent threats, your counter action plans must include risk reduction tactics to minimise risks and dangers associated with environmental and situational hazards and dangers.
Avoiding or taking advantage of environmental hazards and obstacles must always be the modus operandi of the combatant that not only intends to win but wants to win by as safer means as possible.
Always remember advance or real time fast mapping assessment under an expected threat or unexpected actions on respectively is the priority to maximising safety. Making tactically correct threat neutralisation decisions and setting them up and employing them to achieve the best means of threat neutralisation objective achievement must include self-safety tactics to reduce risk.
Arm yourself with knowledge that is of the most current, safe and proven kind that comes from a proven source to ensure not only that you the combatant has the best chances of enemy threat neutralisation but also you have built in high level self-protection and safety tactics to reduce risk to the lowest level personally possible.
This also includes reducing or eliminating chances of being attacked from your rear or side flanks through arming yourself with knowledge and as a result of training capability achieved through sudden aggressive shock actions on BHEs.
Such training increases awareness of the primary threat and also the environmental related threats.
Primary tactics remove or reduce the chances of being taken from behind as in being sucker punched or a weapon being used against you without awareness.
Anyone that is not aware of risks and hazards or runs in or backwards blindly without any concern for their personal safety is putting themselves at increased risk of environmental injury and as such making themselves vulnerable to increasing the opportunity for their aggressor to cause them grievous bodily harm.
